


Two Captains, One Boat

by aurilly



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: British Virgin Islands, Companionable Snark, Gen, Sailing, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-24 09:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4913962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky hijacks Steve's vacation.</p><p>Steve doesn't really mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Captains, One Boat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Starrie_Wolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrie_Wolf/gifts).



Bucky had been to some remote spots in his life, but Tortola was surprisingly hard to get to. He knew how to avoid having to go through airport security, where his arm was sure to set off alarms, but it was a pain that required getting access to the layout of each hub he passed through, stealing badges and timing his entrances at every step. Feasible, but a chore he was in no mood for.

However, after four flights, one delay, a painful layover in Heathrow, and a halfway close call with a plainclothes FBI agent in Miami, Bucky finally found himself boarding a ferry from St. Thomas to Tortola. 

So much for a cool sea breeze whipping through his locks like guys in cologne commercials he’d watched in mid-range European pensions. The Caribbean air was hot and muggy, and they were moving along at a lackadaisical chug.

Once in Road Town, he hotwired a car and made his way to where he knew the staff of this yachting company would head before the next day’s departure. He’d done his research back in Krakow. He knew what bars everyone would go to. He knew the name of the woman who managed the sign-up information was Stephanie. He even knew she liked bird watching and deep scuba dives. Charming her, getting his hands on staffing info, and changing it to his purposes would be child’s play.

Too bad his hair looked like shit. Which meant he’d have to do that much more smiling. He was too jet-lagged for this. 

(Lies. He didn’t even _get_ jet-lagged. He was nervous. But hungry, too, come to think of it.)

* * *

With his mission successfully completed, Bucky spent the next morning browsing the trip supply store and trying not to gag at the inflated prices. He’d already looked through his boat’s pre-ordered groceries and deemed them unsuitable—virtuous, nutritious shit, for the most part. He’d have to have a talk with Steve later.

The only thing that saved it was the giant bag of Oreos mixed in with all the fruit and lean proteins.

A long-forgotten wave of fondness swept over Bucky. Some things never changed, he thought to himself. But quickly following the wave of fondness came a spark of terror. T minus six hours, if he had the schedule right. T minus six hours until he had to face everything he’d been running from. 

He picked up some frozen pizzas, lots of peanut butter and jelly, and, okay, fine, two more bags of Oreos. And booze. Lots of booze. A few lengths of rope and rolls of duct tape went without saying. On his way out, he passed by a box of brightly colored drink umbrellas on toothpicks. He barely hesitated before slipping it into his cart, on a whim.

He wheeled his purchases down the dock towards the boat that would—if all went well—be home for the next week. It was just another catamaran, one like all the others in the marina, but it was his.

Or, it would be, once he got this job out of the way.

He sharpened his knives, hid in one of the pontoon cabins, and waited for the crew to arrive.

* * *

Mission number two was messier, less fun, and resulted in pesky leftovers that he’d have to take care of once they were out to sea. Bucky spent the rest of the afternoon with his feet propped up on the railings, and a plastic cup of boozy red slush on the dashboard in front of him (with a little umbrella in it, of course). 

His ears had been listening while his eyes flicked between the book in his lap and the tennis match he was watching on the StarkPad on a little stand in front of him.

To anyone else, this would have been a dream. But Bucky felt sick to his stomach. Only the soft plops of the rackets hitting the balls calmed him.

Eventually, he heard the unmistakable gait he’d been waiting for (or dreading) come lumbering down the pier—past the first boat, past the second and third and fourth—too heavy to belong to the skinny dweebs in the single hull beside him. 

Bucky’s heart clenched.

“Hi,” Steve’s voice said behind him, friendly and firm.

Bucky closed his eyes, hunched his shoulders, and peered closer at the screen, without turning around.

“They told me the boat was called ‘Salacious,” Steve said next when Bucky hadn’t responded. “Do I have the wrong…”

“No, this is it.” 

He could hear Steve inhale sharply at the sound of the familiar voice. He listened as Steve carefully set his duffel bag on the ground. 

“Buck?”

“Yeah.” Bucky knew Steve’s single word contained more questions than one, and hoped his response answered them all. “It’s me.” 

“I… All right.” Steve sounded one-third like a guy talking to a child, one-third like a guy talking to a possible roof jumper, and one-third like a kid in the process of opening the best Christmas present ever. “What are you doing here?”

“Watching tennis, reading this book on sailing. What’s it look like I’m doing?” Bucky’s shoulders wanted badly to shake, but he kept himself tightly coiled as he swiveled around on his little stool to finally look Steve in the eye. Steve who looked just as not-jet-lagged as Bucky felt, but with bonus surprise. 

“What do you need to read a book on sailing for?” Steve asked slowly.

Bucky touched the jaunty sailing cap he’d bought the day before. “You’re not the only captain around here any more.”

“You’re the captain,” Steve said, flat and questioning.

“Yep. Now hush a minute, will ya?” Bucky said, turning back around and changing the subject before he puked. “It’s Federer’s serve.”

Bucky could almost _hear_ Steve’s brow furrow. But he’d done it. After almost a year on the run, he’d faced Steve, had had something approaching a conversation with him, for almost two whole minutes, without freaking out or trying to kill him or any of the other embarrassing responses he’d had nightmares about every night. He applauded himself as much as Federer at the end of the next point.

“Didn’t know you were a fan,” Steve said next. He’d stood there through a pretty long back and forth, apparently just staring at Bucky’s back. He still sounded dazed, but he’d picked up the signals of what Bucky needed from him right now, which was not to talk about anything real. 

“He’s got great aim. He looks at where he wants to put the ball and it just goes there. Every time.”

“Yeah, he’s really good. So, I’ll just… uh. I’ll just go put my stuff in the cabin, I guess. Which one did you claim?”

“None of ‘em. Take your pick. I’m just the help, you know?” Bucky said, keeping his eyes on the ball. He needed a minute before he looked at Steve again.

“Right.”

After Steve had gone below deck, Bucky tilted his head back and exhaled hard at the sky. That had gone all right, he told himself. The first moment was always going to be the hardest, but now that it was over, he felt confident he could brazen through this. He could brazen it through until there was no problem left. 

He counted the sound of Steve’s steps until they stopped, and then predicted how long it would take him to…

Five, four, three, two, one.

Steve was back, having climbed up the stairs two at a time.

“Bucky? There are bodies in the bathroom.”

“Check under their collars,” Bucky replied, still looking at the screen.

Steve went down again and came back up a few minutes later, much longer than it should have taken to follow that simple directive. This time, Bucky did turn around. He saw that Steve had taken the opportunity to change into what he apparently considered yachting wear. Which, in true Steve fashion, was dweeb wear. He’d actually gone and bought boating shoes, the lovable loser.

Bucky raised one eyebrow at him.

Steve raised the mirror one. 

“Hydra agents?” Steve asked.

“I’ve been monitoring a few assets and holdovers that I don’t think your people ever found out. I’m sure you’ve noticed someone was taking care of people and leaving them for you to find.”

“Yeah. I figured—hoped—it was you.”

“Well, I found out a couple of days ago that they’d learned about your little vacation. Plan was to get you out to sea and then… well.”

“Is that all of them?”

“As far as I know—and I know a lot—these two are the only ones we should expect,” Bucky replied. “But I figured I’d stick around. Just in case.”

Bucky had expected gratitude. He’d expected a hug. He’d expected some sentimental bullshit. But Steve surprised him by not reacting at all. Instead he leaned on the railing on the other side of the deck, and stroked his chin.

“Huh,” he said. 

“What?”

“It’s just funny. I’ve spent a year doing nothing but track you down—”

“You’ve done other stuff, too. I’ve seen it on the news. You and your super squad.”

“Avengers.”

“From the Howling Commandos to the Avengers. You go from one terribly named group to another.”

Steve laughed. “Remember the Buzzards?”

“Sort of.” Flashes of a tiny Steve, and almost as tiny versions of the Brattle boys from two blocks down, running around the neighborhood with Bucky. They’d tied old sheets to their necks, like capes, to pretend they were mythical heroes they’d seen in old books of paintings Steve’s Ma had bought him. “I remember the way a ninety-year-old would remember,” Bucky said, honestly. He hoped it would be enough to satisfy Steve’s curiosity about how he was doing, at least until he was more ready to talk about it.

“I see,” Steve said, and from his tone, Bucky knew he got it. Steve looked just as on edge as Bucky was feeling; he was trying just as hard to play it cool. But the little vein on the left side of his neck had always given him away.

It was clear they both knew what they were doing, and what they were avoiding. But Bucky was too proud to stop, and Steve was too wary and kind-hearted to call him out on it just yet. And so they would continue, for as long as was necessary, to dance this little dance.

(Steve was better at it than he’d ever been at the Charleston.)

“Anyway,” Bucky continued, in the gravelly, nonchalant tone he’d been cultivating for this meeting, an approximation of his old, slightly less gravelly, nonchalant tone. “You were saying you’ve done nothing but try to track me down, which is a lie. I’m offended you outsourced such a personal mission to your flying buddy. Well, one of them. You’ve got a few, which is… unlikely. You ever noticed that?”

“Yes, I have, as a matter of fact. But not any more unlikely than anything else that’s happened to me. Or to you.”

“I still think it’s weirder.”

“Anyway,” Steve parroted, in a pretty good approximation of Bucky’s fake nonchalance, “I was just going to say that the first time I decided to put the search on hold and take some time for myself is the time you come straight to me. Maybe I should have given it a break before. You never could resist a girl who played hard to get.”

“I only came because I got wind people were after you. And I knew you were coming by yourself. Why, by the way? Was there a reason other than your usual boneheadedness?”

“Sam and Natasha were supposed to come with but, you know. Stuff came up, and they bailed. Figured it was still worth doing, even by myself.”

“‘Came up’?” Bucky questioned. “Or was made to come up to get you alone?”

“Yeah, well, now I wonder. I’d say it worked out okay, though, from where I’m standing.” Before he went any further with that train of thought and scared Bucky off, as he knew he probably would, Steve changed the subject. He looked around and his gaze settled on the blender next to Bucky. It was dripping condensation on the outside, and was filled with cold, red, artificial fruitiness on the inside. Pointing at it, he asked, “You made that?”

“Yeah, I killed the cook, so I’m gonna be doing double duty on this ship. You want one?”

“Sure.”

Steve reached to pour one for himself, but Bucky stopped him before he could drink it. 

“You’re forgetting the most important ingredient,” he said.

“What?”

Bucky reached into the plastic bag beside him and dropped a little red drink umbrella into the plastic cup.

Steve stared down at it, glancing up at Bucky with a quizzical expression. “Okay, then. So, cheers? To…” 

Steve’s face went all soppy as he thought of what to say. Bucky cut him off before something he could say whatever corny shit was about to come out. 

“Stow it, Steve,” he said. But he crinkled their plastic cups together anyway.

“What is this supposed to be?” Steve asked after a sip.

Bucky shrugged. “What do you care? It’s sweet and it’s red and you can’t get drunk anyway.”

“It’s the best drink I’ve ever had,” Steve said, so earnestly that Bucky wanted to hit him.

“I should have let them poison you.”

“You’ve always been all talk,” Steve said, staring out at the sea and smiling with so much dorky happiness that he looked about two seconds from bursting into song. “So, captain… When do we leave?”

“As soon as I finish this chapter on safety procedures.”

“You’ve really never sailed a boat before?”

“When would I have learned how to sail a boat?”

Steve shrugged. “I don’t know. The same place you learned how to… lots of things.” 

“Point taken,” Bucky replied. “But no. No sailing required for any of… that. But I figure, how hard can it be?”

* * *

Sailing, it turned out, wasn’t hard at all, especially with Steve around to help him with the anchor when they arrived at Marina Cay, per the itinerary.

Sailing was a hell of a lot easier than cooking.

He’d been nice about the drink, but not even Steve could find anything positive to say about Bucky’s attempt at dinner.

“It’s your fault for ordering such shit groceries,” Bucky complained as he tossed two paper plates worth of food into the trash. “We’re on vacation, not a diet. Here, have an Oreo. It’s the best dinner I can make.”

Steve’s eyes lit up when he saw the multiple packages. “You got extra?”

“Damn right I got extra. I always liked them, too. You’ve gotta remember that, right?”

“I know,” Steve whispered. “I just didn’t know if _you’d_ remember it. All this time, I didn’t know what to expect if I ever…”

They locked eyes for a second before Bucky looked away again. Refusing to take the bait, he breezily continued, “Well, I do. And they’re hard to come by in Eastern Europe.”

“Is that where you’ve been?” Steve asked, spewing black dust from his lips in the process.

“On and off.” Bucky poured himself another drink, and plopped two umbrellas in it. “Hey, I’ve been wondering… Why this? Of all the vacations in the world. I never would have thought it was your speed.”

It had been bothering Bucky ever since his clunky yet effective hacking systems had picked up the fact that Captain America was headed to the British Virgin Islands for a fancy yachting trip. Forget the fact that Hydra was all over it. That was nothing. That he could handle, was perfectly expected. But the idea of Steve doing something Bucky never would have imagined, the idea that his tastes and preferences might have changed so drastically in the time they’d been apart… The fear of that was what had sent Bucky running here, had finally scared him enough to emerge from hiding.

“You’re right. It isn’t my speed,” Steve confessed. “But I didn’t pick it out myself. I won it in a raffle.”

And now everything made sense. Bucky leaned back into his chair and laughed for a good five minutes, so relieved that Steve hadn’t changed—that he’d changed even less than anyone would have thought possible—that he didn’t even mind the moony stare Steve gave him.

“Still a sucker for a raffle, huh?” Bucky asked when he finally calmed down.

“I couldn’t help myself,” Steve said. And even though the whole world had changed around him, that self-satisfied little smile was just the same as it had been when they were twelve and Steve had staked an entire six months worth of allowance the church social raffle, and won them tickets to a Dodgers game. 

“You never could,” Bucky said, feeling his own face getting soft.

They stared at one another for a long minute, sipping at their, admittedly terrible, red slush. 

“Are we going to keep playing this game?” Steve quietly asked. 

“What game?”

“The one where you pretend you haven’t been running away from me all this time. Where you pretend everything’s fine. That you’re okay and that there aren’t bodies downstairs in the bathroom. The one where you pretend this isn’t the first real conversation we’ve had in over seventy years.”

Bucky rolled his eyes with meticulous exaggeration. “I’m sick of everyone talking about it like that. It isn’t as though you were awake and counting. And neither was I, most of the time. It’s been about three for you. Let’s call it around five for me.”

Steve sighed. “I guess we’re gonna keep playing this game.”

“Score one for Barnes.”

“You’re going down eventually. I’m just letting you win this round.”

“You always thought that,” Bucky replied, knowing that they were stuck on this boat together for the next week. It was only a matter of time until he caved and had the painful heart-to-heart Steve was so obviously jonesing for, and which Bucky knew deep down he needed. “But it was never true.”

(It was always true.)


End file.
